There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn’t really hit you, and then when it does, that’s when you feel like shit.
So like an idiot, I hadn’t understood until I was sitting there actually watching her physically die, when it was too late to say or do anything. I couldn’t believe it had taken me so long to understand it even a little bit. This was a human being, dying. This was the only time there was going to be someone with those eyes and those ears and that way of breathing through her mouth and that way of building up right before a monster laugh with her eyebrows all raised and her nostrils flaring a little bit, this was the only time there was ever going to be that person, living in the world, and now that was almost over, and I couldn’t deal with it.
I was thinking, also, that we had made a film about a thing, death, that we knew nothing about. Maybe Earl sort of knew something, but I knew absolutely nothing about it. Plus we had made a film about a girl who we really hadn’t gotten to know. Actually, we hadn’t made the film about her at all. She was just dying, there, and we had gone and made a film about ourselves. We had taken this girl and used her really to make a film about ourselves, and it just seemed so stupid and wrong that I couldn’t stop crying. Rachel the Film is not at all about Rachel. It’s about how little we know about Rachel. We were so ridiculously arrogant to try to make a film about her.
So I was sitting there and the whole time I had this insane wish for Rachel to wake up and just tell me everything she had ever thought, so that it could be recorded somewhere, so that it wouldn’t be lost. I found myself thinking, what if she’s already had her last thought, what if her brain isn’t producing conscious thoughts anymore, and that was so awful that I started completely bawling, I was making hideous sobbing noises like an elephant seal or something, like: HURNK HURNGK HRUNNNN.
Denise was just sitting there frozen.
At the same time, and I hated myself for this, I was realizing how to make the movie I should have made, that it had to be something that stored as much of Rachel as possible, that ideally we would have had a camera on her for her whole life, and one inside her head, and it made me so bitter and fucking angry that this was impossible, and she was just going to be lost. Just as if she had never been around to say things and laugh at people and have favorite words that she liked to use and ways of fidgeting with her fingers when she got antsy and specific memories that flashed through her head when she ate a certain food or smelled a certain smell like, I dunno, how maybe honeysuckle made her think of one particular summer day playing with a friend or whatever the fuck, or how rain on the windshield of her mom’s car used to look like alien fingers to her, or whatever, and as if she had never had fantasies about stupid Hugh Jackman or visions of what her life was going to be like in college or a whole unique way of thinking about the world that was never going to be articulated to anyone. All of it and everything else she had ever thought was just going to be lost.
And the point of Rachel the Film should really have been to express how awful and shitty that loss was, that she would have become a person with a long awesome life if she had been allowed to continue living, and that this was just a stupid meaningless loss, just a motherfucking loss, a loss loss loss fucking loss, there was no fucking meaning to it, there was nothing good that could come out of it, and I was sitting there thinking about the film and I knew the film would have to have a scene of me losing my shit in the hospital room, and her mom sitting there wordless and dead-eyed like a statue, and I hated myself for having a cold detached part of me that thought this, but I couldn’t help it.
At some point during all this, my mom came in, and if you think it was possible for either of us to talk through all the crying, you may just be stupid.
We had to step out into the hall eventually, but not before Mom had a bizarre interaction with Denise, where she hugged Denise’s body and said some incoherent things while Denise just sat there rigidly.
So Mom and I sat there in two generic institutional chairs in the hallway and tried to get all the crying out of our system, and eventually I was able to talk in short little bursts.
“I just w want her to w , wake up.”
“Oh, honey.”
“It s sucks.”
“You made her very happy.”
“If I m , made her h happy, then why is sn’ sn’t she trying to f fight. Harder.”
“It’s just too hard. Honey. Some things, no one can fight.”
“It sucks.”
“Death happens to everyone.”
“HurrnNRNNNGK.”
This went on for like an hour. I’ll spare you the rest of it. Eventually, we stopped talking, and there was a long silence as people like Gilbert were wheeled around and doctors and nurses strode briskly past them.
Then Mom said: “I’m sorry.”
I thought I knew what she was talking about.
“Well, I just wish you had asked me first.”
“I did ask you first, but I guess I didn’t really give you a choice.”
“Mom, what are you talking about. You didn’t ask me first.”
“Are we talking about the same thing?”
“I’m talking about the stupid pep rally.”
“Oh.”
“What are you talking about.”
“I’m talking about getting you to spend time with Rachel in the first place.”
“The pep rally was way worse.”
“That, I don’t feel bad about. I do feel bad about making you deal with such a difficul—”
“You don’t feel bad about the pep rally?”
“No, but I do feel bad ab—”
“The pep rally was a nightmare. It was literally like a nightmare.”
“If you regret that your beautiful movie was shown to your classmates, then I really don’t know how to respond to that.”
“I can’t believe that you still think that was a good idea. First of all, th—”
“There are some things—”
“Can I just finish?”
“First, there are some—”
“Can I just finish. Mom. Mom, let me finish. Mom. Jesus Christ.”
We were both using Mom’s unstoppable nonstop-stream-of-words move, and I think she was so surprised that I was using it back on her that she actually relented and let me talk.
“Fine. What.”
“Mom. My classmates hated the film. And Earl and I really don’t like it either. We don’t think it’s very good. In fact, we think it’s terrible.”
“If you—”
“Mom, you have to let me finish.”
“Fine.”
“It’s not a good film. OK? Actually, it sucks. Because—Mom, chill—we had pretty good intentions, but that doesn’t mean we made a good film. OK? Because it’s not about her at all. It’s just this embarrassing thing that shows that we don’t even understand anything about her. And also, you’re my mom, so you’re ridiculously biased, and you can’t see that the film actually sucks and doesn’t make any sense.”
“Honey. It’s so creative. It—”
“Just because something is weird and hard to understand doesn’t mean it’s creative. That’s—that’s the whole problem. If you want to pretend like something is good, even when it’s not, that’s when you use the stupid word ‘creative.’ The film sucked. Our classmates hated it.”
“They just didn’t understand it.”
“They didn’t understand it because we made a shitty film.”
“Honey.”
“If it was good, they would have liked it. They would have understood it. And if it was good, maybe it would have helped.”
We were quiet again. Someone a few doors down seemed to be loudly dying. It really did not help the mood.
“Well, maybe you’re right.”
“I am right.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“OK.”
“What you don’t understand is, it’s hard when your children start growing up,” said Mom, and all of a sudden she was crying again, way harder than before, and I had to comfort her. We were doing a Cross-Chair Hug, and physically it was extremely awkward.
Crying semi-hysterically, Mom made a number of points:
• Your friend is dying
• It’s just so hard to watch a child die
• And it’s much harder to watch a friend’s daughter die
• But the hardest is watching your son watching his friend die
• You have to make your own decisions now
• It’s so hard for me to let you make your own decisions
• But I have to let you make your own decisions
• I am so proud of you
• Your friend is dying, and you have been so strong
I wanted to argue with some of this. I hadn’t been strong at all, and I definitely didn’t feel like I had done anything to be proud of. But somehow I knew this was no time for an episode of Excessive Modesty Hour.
We left. I knew I wouldn’t see Rachel again. I just felt kind of empty and exhausted. Mom got me some Kahlúa ice cream with habaneros and bee pollen in it. It tasted OK.
That’s when I knew I was going to make it.
Winter break was almost over. It hadn’t snowed yet. Earl and I were in Thuyen’s Saigon Flavor and it was the first time we had seen each other since I became a hermit. Thuyen’s Saigon Flavor is that Vietnamese restaurant in Lawrenceville that Mr. McCarthy recommended to us the day we accidentally got stoned and told Rachel that we were filmmakers. I thought Earl would be more likely to want to meet up if it was at a place with bizarre and possibly inedible food.
Earl was already there when I showed up. I was sweating a lot under my winter coat because I had biked from my house. Also, my glasses were all fogged up, so I had to take them off and squint around like a mole-rat. Earl did not identify himself, so I wandered at random around the restaurant until I located him. He was sullenly stirring his bowl of soup.
“WELCOME WELCOME,” said a blurry object who was probably Thuyen, momentarily scaring the hell out of me.
“Hey,” I said to Earl.
“Sup.”
“Is that pho?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it good?”
“It’s got tendons in it and shit.”
“Huh.”
“WHAT YOU LIKE TO ORDER,” said Thuyen. He was about my height and shape, and he seemed disproportionately happy that we were there.
“Pho,” I said.
“ONE PHO,” bellowed Thuyen, and waddled away.
“Drug-free for once,” muttered Earl.
The music was extremely smooth R&B, and it was playing kind of loud. “You’re my sexy love,” a guy was crooning. “Se-e-exy lo-o-ove.”
“So,” I said. “I dunno if you heard, but Rachel died.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“So, uh. Did you end up getting your DVDs back from her?”
“Yeah,” said Earl, stirring.
“Can we make some copies of those?”
Earl raised his eyebrows.
“I sort of freaked out,” I said. “I kind of had this freak-out and, uh, scratched all my copies up. So I don’t have any copies anymore.”
Earl looked at me kind of bug-eyed.
“I burnt mine,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. For some reason, this didn’t surprise me all that much. I probably should have freaked out when I heard it.
“Yeah,” he said. “I burnt em in a trash can.”
“I guess there are no more copies,” I said.
“You jacked yours up? They don’t play no more?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Damn,” Earl said.
“Ooh girl!” bleated the R&B guy. “You make me say, ‘Ooh ooh ooh.’”
We were both quiet for a while. Then Earl said, “I didn’t think you was gonna jack up your copies.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just kind of freaked out. I dunno.”
“It didn’t even occur to me that you would . . . do something like that.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” I said, but Earl didn’t seem to be trying to make me feel bad. He just seemed kind of astonished.
“ONE PHO,” announced Thuyen, putting the bowl on the table. It smelled kind of great and kind of nasty. I would be smelling it and it would have this amazing kind of beefy sweet licorice smell for a while, and then suddenly there would be this hint of some other smell, which was sort of the smell of a sweaty butt. There was also a big complicated plate with leaves and fruit and sperm-looking bean sprouts on it.
I was trying to figure out what to eat first when Earl suddenly said, “It’s a good thing, man, because I can’t be making films no more. I gotta get a job or something. I gotta make some money and get outta my mom’s goddamn house.”
“Oh yeah?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Earl. “It’s time to move on, man. I can’t be doing this no more.”
“What kind of job are you thinking about getting?”
“Man, I don’t know. Manage a Wendy’s or some shit.”
We tried to eat. The broth was OK. The various animal parts were a little too weird for me. They had little knobbly bumps and huge chunks of fat and stuff. There were also “beef balls.” There was no way I was going to eat those.
I don’t know why I brought it up, but I said, “I’m probably failing some classes.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I stopped going to school basically.”
“Yup, McCarthy was pissed.”
“Well, he can suck it,” I said, and then was immediately filled with regret.
“Don’t talk shit,” said Earl.
I didn’t say anything to that.
“You’re stupid if you fail,” continued Earl. He didn’t sound pissed. He was being very matter-of-fact. “You’re smarter than that, man. You got college and shit to look forward to. Get a good job and shit.”
“I was thinking,” I said, “maybe I don’t want to go to college. Maybe I want to go to film school.”
“What, cuz of Rachel.”
“No. Did she say anything to you about film school?”
“She axed me to apply to film school. I figured she probly axed you, too. I was like, Girl, are you outta your mind. I ain’t got no money for no film school.”
“You could get a scholarship, though.”
“Ain’t nobody giving my ass no scholarship,” said Earl, and finally he ate some noodles.
“Why not?” I asked.
Sort of menacingly, with his mouth full, Earl said, “It’s just not gonna happen.”
We ate some more. The R&B guy was singing happily about how a girl kept him “sprung.” Thuyen was kind of singing along to it, from behind a sketchy-looking glass counter.
For some reason, I couldn’t drop the film school thing.
“I’m probably gonna apply to film school anyway,” I said. “So I guess I’ll need to make some new films for that.”
Earl was munching something.
“I don’t know if you wanna help out with it,” I said.
Earl didn’t look at me. After a while he said, kind of sadly, “I can’t be doing this anymore.”
Then some kind of very evil and/or stupid space alien took control of my brain and made me say something unbelievably shitty.
“Rachel would probably like that, though,” I heard myself say. “If we were working together.”
Earl stared at me for a while.
“You don’t know shit, man,” he said finally. He was brisk and sad at the same time. “I hate to get on you for this. I’m not getting on you for this, but I’m just telling you. This is the first . . . negative thing that happened to you in your life. And you can’t be overreacting to it and making big-ass expensive decisions based on it. I’m just saying. People die. Other people do stupid shit. I’m surround
ed by family members doing stupid shit. I used a think I had to do shit for them. I still wanna do shit for them. But you gotta live your own life. You gotta take care a your own shit before you get started doing things for errybody else.”
I was quiet because this was a completely unprecedented outburst for him. I mean, it was unprecedented because it was so personal. Or maybe that’s not it. I don’t know. Anyway, I was silenced by this and eventually that made him keep talking.
“I don’t wanna leave my mama behind,” he said, in the same tone of voice as before. “In that house. Drinking morning till night and always being online and shit. I don’t wanna leave Derrick and Devin. They a couple of jackasses. They all dumb as hell, man. I look around and ain’t nobody got a family as bad as mine. Ain’t nobody live in a damn shithole of a house like mine.
“But I gotta take care of my own shit,” he said. I think he was talking more to himself than to me at that point. He was sort of explaining, sort of pleading. “They got shit to figure out before I can help em. I love my mama, but she has problems that I can’t help her with. I love my brothers, but they need to figure they shit out before I can help em. Otherwise they just gonna drag me down.”
It was possible for me to go for months without remembering that Earl had a mom. It was really jarring for me to hear about her, for some reason. I didn’t even have a picture of her in my head. She was this kind of small faded-looking woman with big eyes and a sort of dreamy smile all the time.
Anyway, Earl seemed happier that he had said all of this. Then he noticed me like he had forgotten that I was there.
“Same thing with you and Rachel, except she dead, so it don’t even matter what you do for her. You gotta do what’s good for you. You gotta graduate, son. Graduate, go to college, get some job. We can’t be doin this no more.”
This was simultaneously awesome and depressing. At any rate, Earl had actually gotten himself in a good mood.
“The hell Vietnamese people even think to put some of this shit in soup,” he said. “Look at this damn thing. Look like somebody’s nutsack up in here.”
Without warning, it was time for Gross-Out Mode. I didn’t feel up to it, but I did my best.
“That’s nutsack? That’s not a butthole?”
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl Page 18
